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1.7.3-Theonlycheeseleft
Brick!Club 1.7.3: A Tempest in a Skull Wait, Madeleine is Jean Valjean? THIS IS BRAND NEW INFORMATION. I like that Hugo does not even pretend like we don’t know this already. Whenever Hugo jumps in and talks about how unsubtle or not-giving-a-fuck-for-what-I’m-about-to-do he is (see: Waterloo), I fall in love with this book all over again. So we’ve reached the “Who Am I?” chapter, and while I think this is one of the better book-to-musical translations, in terms of content and tone, there are still so many little things in here that I love that didn’t make it into the adaptation. First off, I love the fact that Valjean has, to this point, lived his life by two principles, “to conceal his name and to sanctify his life” and “to escape men and return to God,” and that, suddenly, neither of those is really worth a damn anymore, that “his first duty was not toward himself,” and yet, “nothing just like this had yet presented itself.” One of my favorite things about this book is the returning motif of characters learning life changing things, about themselves and others, throwing all of their might behind their new belief, and then suddenly, unexpectedly, getting tackled with another belief that shatters the first. (See: Marius’s father and his crush on Napoleon.) Valjean experiences a life-changing moment with the bishop, a moment that defined how he would live from there on out, but we are now forced to acknowledge that just because you have one transformative moment in your life, doesn’t mean you won’t have another, another that will make you question everything you knew about yourself, including the things that transformed you once before. So often in fiction you see the “Character Goes Through Life Changing Moment And Becomes Instant Better Person; Nothing Is Hard Anymore” trope, and I love that Hugo acknowledges yes, Valjean has changed dramatically, but that does not mean he is now equipped to handle every hardship thrown his way, or that he has filled up his One Big Moment quota. Life is about continually learning to adapt, and about realizing that you won’t ever have all the answers. Another of my favorite things about Valjean’s internal conflict is that his biggest fear seems to be his control over the situation. “He began by recognizing the fact that, critical and extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely master of it. This only caused an increase of his stupor.” He tries to pan his decision off on “the Will of God,” but I love that it comes right back around to smack him the face with a cry of “Bullshit!” He is the one with the control in this situation, and that’s what I think scares Valjean the most. He has given his life over to God. He has a self-preservation instinct, but if the Will of God dictates he go to prison, I think Valjean would accept it, at this point. But Valjean recognizes that he does have a choice here, that his decision to let Champmathieu take the fall would be murder because of it, that his decision to turn himself in would cause twice as much personal anguish because of it. There is no easy answer. He has a destiny, of course, because Hugo is all about God’s Will. But Valjean cannot accept destiny as the excuse or the easy way out. He recognizes that “Destiny is as malicious as an intelligent being, and becomes as monstrous as the human heart.” God may have a course for him, but Valjean still has to figure out what that is, and he can still screw it up, and it will still hurt tremendously. And the chapter ends with Valjean not having made up his mind about anything, which I think is great, because how many times can you think yourself in circle after circle and convince yourself of one thing and then another and then three hours later, you’re exactly where you started? I know these feels, Valjean. (I mean, not about the imprisonment or being mayor of a town or having a Bishop change your life with candlesticks or an obsessed police inspector on your ass or the deep crisis of faith relating to mistaken identity or….any of it, really. But the thinking in circles thing. I get that. Solidarity, bro *fist bump*) Also, this: Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive trees quivered in the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup that appeared to Him dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all studded with stars. What? Hugo, you okay? (Side note: I read “There was a moment when he reflected on the future” as “There was a moment when he reflected on the furniture,” and was like, Hugo, you are too obsessed with couches.) Commentary Constancecomment Sorry, loving the meta, but the point about Hugo having an interior design fetish? Sarah1281 I think it’s a little much to say Valjean doing nothing and letting Champmathieu go to Toulon is murdering him. Is it suicide of him to turn himself in? It’s definitely morally repugnant and he would be enabling the torture and enslavement of a relatively innocent man instead of having it happened to himself but the death penalty wasn’t on the table at this point. His life may have been shortened in the galleys but I still don’t see how it’s anywhere close to murder. Theonlycheeseleft (reply to Sarah1281) Ack, sorry, I was referring to this: He was robbing another of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sunshine. He was becoming an assassin. He was murdering, morally murdering, a wretched man. Should’ve quoted. My bad. Sarah1281 (reply to Theonlycheeseleft's reply) Ah, so it’s Valjean exaggerating once more and deciding that things are far worse than they are. I would’ve thought that just sending a man to a lifetime in Toulon would be enough for him to feel bad about. Pilferingapples Wait What WHAT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE SWEET CHEESES WHAT HAVE YOU DONE I think you just made me ACTUALLY LIKE BRICK!MARIUS I mean I have been working on that and we aren’t there in the book but OH MY GOSH who even am I any more, what is this reread doing to me How appropriate that I’m having a readerly identity crisis on this chapter I GUESS I better take an evening to freak out about this Also yay hi Cheese Hi GLAD YOU’RE BACK so you can wreck my concepts a bit THANKS A LOT I’m just going to focus on how hilariously Bible fanficcy the quote about Jesus is out of context and THE COUCHES WE ARE NEVER FORGETTING THE COUCHES. Theonlycheeseleft (reply to Pilferingapples) WAIT THAT QUOTE IS ABOUT JESUS? *FACEPALM* AND ALSO HUGOOOOOO *SHAKES FIST AT THE HEAVENS* Artificialities (reply to Theonlycheeseleft's reply) Yes, anything that involves an allusion to a cup passing from someone is an allusion to Jesus! Specifically, to the Gospels: Matthew 26 (here's http://biblehub.com/kjv/luke/22.htm#39 the King James version, and here's http://biblehub.com/niv/matthew/26.htm#36 the more modern New International version) and Luke 22 (KJVhttp://biblehub.com/kjv/luke/22.htm#39; NIVhttp://biblehub.com/niv/luke/22.htm#39) and Mark 14 (KJVhttp://biblehub.com/kjv/mark/14.htm#32; NIVhttp://biblehub.com/niv/mark/14.htm#32). John doesn’t have it, but John differs from the other gospels in various ways, and I’m not getting into that because this is already really long-winded religious meta without bringing in controversial Biblical history. In fact, it’s long-winded enough that I’m gonna put the actual meta behind a Read More. The summary version is that Jesus has just had the Last Supper with his disciples. He’s known for ages that the Romans and the local powers that be want to get rid of this troublemaker, but here’s where he tells his disciples that, no seriously, he’s going to be executed soon. Of all his disciples – his best friends, presumably — one of them (Judas) will betray him, and one of them (Peter) will deny knowing him, and so on. They all say “No, no, we would never do that!” but, spoiler, of course they do. He’s very calm through all of this, just telling them how it is, and then he leaves most of them and goes to a place called Gethsemane, and it’s there that he grieves. He prays to God: “Let this cup pass from me.” This is too hard, God; I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be betrayed and die in agony; isn’t there any other way? All things are possible for You, I know you love me, so can’t you spare me this? “The spirit is willing,” he says, “but the flesh is weak.” I know this is the right thing, but I can’t help my grief at the prospect. God, I don’t want to. But we all know how this ends. He says, “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” He says, “Thy will be done.” He says, if this has to happen – if there’s no other way – then so be it. Luke has an angel appear to strengthen him; Matthew and Luke just have him weep, and pray, and grieve, and then be done with that. Jesus gets up, and he tells his friends come on, I’m about to be betrayed, let’s go do this, and he goes to where Judas betrays him with a kiss and the Romans arrest him. And he dies, crucified. So that’s what Hugo’s calling on, when he compares Valjean to “the mysterious Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity.” It’s pretty on the nose, of course. And the first time I read that, I just skimmed right over it – oh, there’s a Jesus comparison, yep, this sure is a let-this-cup-pass-from-me situation, thanks for the anvil, Hugo, moving on. It’s an allusion you get pretty often from writers who assume their audience knows Biblical allusions, and Hugo’s contemporary audience certainly would’ve. It wasn’t until I saw this question (thanks, Brick Club!) that I started actually thinking about it. Because, if I understand the cultural context right, to Hugo’s original audience, sympathy for Jean Valjean is a much harder sell. He’s a convict – a genuinely scary figure! His soul was bought by the Bishop, and he immediately went out and robbed a kid, and then had a bluescreen of existential crisis over it, and then… disappeared from the pages. He didn’t, of course. We’ve been watching him as Madeleine. But would the original audience have caught onto that before it was revealed? I honestly don’t know. It was foreshadowed pretty heavily to my eyes, but I knew the story going in; and anyway, there are always people who miss the foreshadowing angles, and get surprised by obvious plot twists. Would a contemporary audience have seen the Mayor, the mediator, the virtuous businessman and alms-giver, the man who brought prosperity to a town, and thought, Ah yes, that’s obviously the convict? I don’t know. Either way, though, this is the first section in a long while where we’re getting Valjean qua Valjean – a Valjean who admits, to the reader and to himself, that that’s who he is. That Valjean’s past is his. That Valjean’s deeds were his own. And what’s the first thing he does, newly revealed to the reader? He gets the chance to save the life of an innocent man – and he agonizes about whether to do it. For good reasons, human reasons, but still, he’s profoundly conflicted between better impulses and worse. And yes, he absolutely has valid reason to weigh the livelihood of M-sur-M in his calculations, and the narrative even tells us later that his assumptions on that score were justified; Valjean’s dilemma is also a choice between two evils, and two goods. But a lot of it comes down to this: This is too hard. I don’t want to do this. God, isn’t there another way? I know it’s the right thing to do, but I can’t bear it. Can’t I get out of this somehow? The convict, revealed, wants again to flee, to hide, to live at the expense of others. Which is what makes it so interesting what Hugo’s doing here. It’s not just that Valjean, our saintly thief of a single loaf of bread, is compared to Jesus. It’s that Valjean’s very dilemma – his fight against his worse impulses, against selfishness and self-preservation and the prospect of future agony – makes him more like Jesus. Jesus wept, and Jesus pleaded, and Jesus went willingly down to be arrested, and died on the cross next to two condemned thieves. Valjean, the convict, the condemned thief, the man at war with himself for any excuse to delay, any excuse to not do this thing, any sign that this cup should really go to someone else – Valjean is brought closer to God and Jesus, narratively, by his very moment of human weakness. Pretty deft, for an unsubtle throwaway allusion. Pilnytheyounger (reply to Artificialities' reply) this is beautiful beautiful meta, and I’m so happy to see someone going into Hugo’s uses of/references to the Bible - I hadn’t thought of how pointed the reference was at that moment at all, and it’s a real example of how complex the narrative is. and has also overwhelmed me with feelings about Jean Valjean. JEAN VALJEAAAAAN. who has named himself “Madeleine” but is in fact walking in the steps of “the unfortunate Being…”. Thank you, this lays it out perfectly. Theonlycheeseleft (reply to Artificialities' reply) I WAS VERY SERIOUS ABOUT NOT UNDERSTANDING THAT QUOTE WAS ABOUT JESUS. BUT NOW I UNDERSTAND. I UNDERSTAND SO MUCH. This is beautiful everyone go read the thing. Notquitelostnotquitefound (reply to Artificialities' reply) THIS META IS BEAUTIFUL READ IT